A) Parish should have 2 lay Corporators approved by the Archbishop, as well as, fully functional Pastoral Council and Finance Committee with terms of 5- years, 3- years and 3-years, respectively. These terms can be renewable.
B) Corporators, Pastoral Council and Finance Committee members may not serve as voting members on any of the other committees.
C) Corporators, Finance Committee and Pastoral Council should meet at least quarterly, minutes should be taken and documented for each meeting and these minutes should be maintained at the Parish office.
D) Minutes of the Parish Corporators meetings should be sent to the Chancery at least annually.
E) Parish’s budget should be reviewed and approved by the Corporators and Pastoral Council before it is finalized and sent to the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
F) Finance staff (i.e. Business Manager, Accountant) should attend the Finance Committee meetings.
G) Parish/School should create a Conflict of Interest statement and require that all committee members (Finance, Pastoral Council, Corporators and School Board) agree to and sign.
Parish/School should contact a qualified vendor (i.e. EMG) to develop a Facilities Condition Assessment (long-term maintenance plan) that anticipates the costs associated with maintaining their buildings, property, etc. This plan should identify all major facilities components (i.e. buildings, roofs, boilers, parking lots, etc.), their estimated remaining life and the cost to repair/replace each component. This plan should be used during the annual budgeting process.
When it comes to segregation of duties, small business best practices are especially important. A lack of segregation of duties is a significant contributing factor in almost all occurrences of fraud, and is often found to be a weakness during post-analysis of system compromises. Segregation of duties means the steps in key processes are divided among two or more people so no one individual can act alone to subvert a process for his or her own gain or purposes.
A) Individuals with the ability to input transactions into accounting records (QuickBooks Online and/or FACTS) should not receive, count, transport, or take custody of funds and should not have access or knowledge of the combination to safe(s) where funds are held.
B) These individuals should not sign checks, have access or use of credit cards or approve disbursements.
The Parish/School should hang at least 3 Ethics Hotline posters up in prominent locations throughout their facility to ensure that employees, volunteers, parents, parishioners, vendors and other interested parties can confidentially report concerns related to human resource issues or financial misconduct.
